


quantum theory takes a hike

by thychesters



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: 2. comic book science, But also, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, Peter Parker Lives, Sorry Pete, and i said no but here we are anyhow, because: 1. norm shoved him face first into the collider beam and, i don’t make the rules i just pretend they don’t exist, in this essay I will, it was 3 a.m. and my brain said ‘u know how comic book science works’, nice going norm like did you really think that was a good idea or, one of those he died but didn’t die fics, peter jealous of peter b? u got it dude, peter parker died at 26 and i had an existential crisis, so wormholes here we come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-11-29
Packaged: 2020-01-05 10:09:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18363899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thychesters/pseuds/thychesters
Summary: peter parker is acutely aware of two things: he’s never been in this much pain in his life, and that he’s supposed to be dead.or, in which peter parker dies but doesn’t die, and without naming names,someoneopened up a wormhole when the collider gizmo blew up, and here he is, a week after the fact.





	1. we fall down.

**Author's Note:**

> the universe has [redacted] peter parker over so many times, it was time to cut the kid some slack.
> 
> also, i don't want to take anything away from miles, but i don't want to take anything away from mj/may, either. so enter peter and Woah Man is He Tired, and honestly? he's kinda relieved there's someone new around to take on the mantle, and maybe, yeah, ok, just a little bit jealous someone else go to show him the ropes before he did.
> 
> because comic book science.
> 
> i haven't read any of the comics, save for one of my dad's from the 60s, but i was also 12 at the time. all typos are my own. i'm very proud of them. i'm going to name them. (actually, i'm going to go finish spider-man on the ps4, which also counts as its own canon, so.)
> 
> cheers!

He’s going to die. He knows this.

But even knowing, somehow, having contingency plans in place for this day he knew was going to come eventually, doesn’t make it that much easier.

He should have known death wouldn’t be easy.

He’s going to die, and as he stares death in the face, he can only wish that it didn’t bear a striking resemblance to Kingpin. If he’s honest, which he tries to be, with those who matter, part of him had always entertained the notion that death would come in the form of Uncle Ben, reaching out a hand with that soft, warm smile of his, and Peter would take it, feel six years-old again and wander off into oblivion with his uncle. It’s corny, but it was always a comforting thought.

His death isn’t quick, isn’t painless. Of course not.

Instead, he’s lying half-buried under rubble, with an arm that isn’t in its socket like it’s supposed to be, and a tingling sensation in the back of his mind that’s making his head swim, screaming danger, pain, danger, pain. Spider-sense has never paired well with a concussion. Each breath stings, ribs contracting painfully, and he’s certain that at least three of them are broken, if not badly bruised.

The particle beam makes him feel lightheaded, spots of color dotting his surroundings as images of the multiverse appear behind his eyelids in little flash bangs. In one universe, he knows, now, he doesn’t exist, in another he’s alive, in this one, in this present, he is dead.

Idly, he wonders what another Peter Parker would do in this situation in his universe. He doesn’t have much time to dwell on the thought, and his head rolls along the rubble that did little to cushion his fall.

It's ... a lot. A little too much.

His vision is obscured by the broken lens of his mask, and he squints, cataloguing every injury he’s aware of, and even those he doesn’t feel yet.

Spider-Man gets back up, Spider-Man always gets back up. Peter Parker doesn’t know if he can.

Man, he is so tired. Did he mention that?

But what scares him most of all, above all the pain, above wanting to see MJ, see Aunt May, one last time, please, come on, the last thing he said to MJ was “smell ya later” because she got new perfume, Aunt May hasn’t reprimanded him for tearing his suit again yet. What scares him most of all is the kid in front of him, the one regarding him with sheer terror, eyes wide and hands trembling, and Peter wants nothing more than to tell him everything will be okay and for it to be true. He says it anyway. He knows the kid doesn’t believe it. He doesn’t.

He failed. That hurts too. On the scale of things, it falls just below his chest concaving, and this kid, this kid who can’t be any older than thirteen, fourteen at most, is staring back at him, eyes pleading for him to get up.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Just resting,” he says, though despite his tone there is a note of finality to it, the knowledge that this is it. This is Spider-Man’s final resting place, the wreckage of a super collider he couldn’t destroy, and the image of this boy’s face, knowing he’s failed him, too, because he didn’t keep his word.

The boy, he doesn’t even know his name, promises, and his chest aches because something in it is broken that definitely shouldn’t be, because he knows he’ll keep it, because he wants to see this kid reach his full potential. Wants things he didn’t even know he wanted until five minutes ago: to teach this kid the literal ropes, wants to reach the day he can pass on the Spider-Man mantle, retire with his wife and their three kids, two dogs, maybe a goldfish. He can imagine a whole plethora of opportunities that will never come, a spider web of futures that will now cease to exist.

He _wants_. He wants so much. God, he _wants_.

He doesn’t want to die.

He knew this day was going to come ever since he donned the mask. Doesn’t make it any easier.

The sensation in the back of his mind reaches a fever pitch. Spider-Man always gets up.

Kingpin is hard to miss, even with all the debris, the sheets of metal and slabs of concrete, like the one the kid barely managed to push off him. He doesn’t get a fighting chance. The mask comes off and he wonders if this means he dies as Peter Parker, or as Spider-Man.

Pleading with the bad guys has never been a good look for anyone, and the moment he opens his mouth he knows the words fall on deaf ears. No criminal has ever turned around and gone “gosh golly, Spider-Man, you sure are right,” except for maybe that one guy who held up the bodega on Sixth once, but even then he was being sarcastic.

His vision tunnels until all he can see is the unadulterated fury on Wilson Fisk’s blurry features, the spot of color that is the shoulder of the kid’s hoodie and please kid, don’t look, please kid, don’t look. His spider-sense explodes until it’s pins and needles in every limb, in every appendage he only thinks he can feel, and he knows, he knows, he just wishes he got to say a real goodbye.

Peter Parker closes his eyes, and then everything he is and knows and wants shatters into oblivion.

— — — —

Oblivion is cold.

— — — —

Oblivion is cold until it isn’t.

— — — —

His chest heaves and a broken scream rips out through his teeth, a garbled, ineloquent noise that sounds distinctly inhuman. He clenches his jaw as his attempt to choke back a sob fails, and it comes tearing out of his throat as every bruise, scrape, and broken bone comes rushing back into existence.

He opens his eyes and draws a breath, a deep inhale his chest can barely handle, and almost starts screaming again. Pain cripples his chest, the sensation of death like a phantom limb, and he’s aware of a roar of anger, of his heart and ribs and lungs giving under immense pressure because there were some things even superhuman strength and healing couldn’t withstand. He’s aware of Wilson’s Fisk’s last words, of his own, roaring in his ears, of oblivion pulling him apart molecule by molecule, stitching his atoms back together in a way that leaves him reeling.

He’s aware of things, of people, of events that should not exist, but do, but have, but will.

Peter’s aware he should be dead.

He knows he died in this universe, should have. It isn’t the most comforting thought, though he feels a vague sense of it because ha, guess what, universe.

Pain lances up his chest. Maybe pointing a finger and laughing at the universe isn’t the cards right now. He can think on that after he’s glued himself back together, nursed his injuries and taken stock of what is, isn’t, could be. The knowledge that the multiverse, of what he’s seen in the thirty seconds that stretched into infinity when Norman Osborn gave him the worst kind of swirly makes his head spin.

He closes his eyes, opens them again. Nothing changes. His body still hurts in a way it never has before, like death sitting on his chest instead of Kingpin’s fists, and his ears strain for the subtle scraping of sneaker soles on concrete, of heavy footsteps or the rushed ones of scientists scurrying away.

Nothing comes.

Even with enhanced hearing all he finds is the blood rushing in his ears, the ever-present sound of movement of NYC in the distance. It’s disquieting, given in the next ten seconds, in his universe, Kingpin comes lumbering around the debris in all glory, in the next thirty he dies.

But there is nothing, and perhaps that is more unnerving.

He blinks, drawing in a breath that rattles around his chest more than settles in his lungs, and takes stock of the world around him, beyond the little bubble of pain he resides in. 

He’s alone, he’s alone and that hurts a bit, too. He’s alone, but he knows he shouldn’t have expected anything less. He shouldn’t have expected this at all, and yet here he is, splayed out on the ground, miserable, and half-waiting for death to circle back because you know what, it decided it wasn’t actually done with Peter, spit the wrong one back out by accident. Spit out a Peter that didn’t fail in saving Brooklyn, because maybe that’s the dimension he’s slipped into, if he’s in a dimension at all, as opposed to some lucid state that doesn’t exist. 

All the multiverse thought makes his head pound more than it already is.

He doesn’t know how much time goes slipping through his fingers as he lies there, another sob ready come tearing its way up his throat before it abruptly cuts off because the kid, oh God, the kid. Did he get out, did Kingpin find him? Is he safe?

The spider-sense is a dull throb in the back of his head to coincide with the one thrumming throughout the rest of his body.

Unshed tears prick at the corner of his eyes, threaten to come spilling through the ripped eye hole. He doesn’t remember putting his mask back on. Was it ever off?

He’s supposed to be dead, and it’s a thought that circles his mind as he eventually starts to move, tests how it feels to roll from one side to another (like total crap) and decides that if he’s about to die, he’d rather not do so in Fisk’s basement. Again.

It’s a jarring sensation.

Who found the body? The police? Was he left here for the scientists to pick through, to pluck from? Did they leave him on his own doorstep, left for MJ to find when she came home? Was he left on Aunt May’s, or did they merely dump him in the middle of the street?  
  
Did the kid find him?

His stomach twists, the image of the kid’s face swarming him, knowing that he couldn’t keep his promise, couldn’t show the kid the ropes. He couldn’t even successfully lie to himself. What an impression that's going to make.

Did the kid get out?

It messes with his equilibrium, but after a few minutes of struggling Peter manages to sit upright. His stomach goes from twisting to lurching as vertigo takes over, and while his one arm hangs uselessly in his lap, he has half a mind to lie back down, because it’s easier and it hurts less. 

If he lies back down he won’t get back up.

Getting to his feet is another battle in and of itself, and he’s pretty sure he deserves a gold medal, or a gold star simply for getting to his feet and managing not to go crashing back down to the ground five seconds later. His left arm curls around his waist, each breath coming in a short, shallow pants, and he swallows back stomach bile as the sensation that his shoulder is out of its socket strikes him again. It’s one of the things he can contend with, because that pain is nothing in comparison to his chest, his back, his everything else.

Picking through rubble only leads him to more rubble, and he grits his teeth as he lets his head loll back, searching for a way out. _Up_ sounds like an awful idea right now. A simple _thwip_ and he’d be out of here in about ten seconds. As it stands, only one of his web shooters is viable, and he doesn’t think his body would be able to withstand the sudden change in altitude. Not that walking is much better, but at least it doesn’t entail whiplash, and if he falls it’s a little less than six feet, not two stories.

He feels a presence around him like a ghost, like multiple ones, words he knows and ones he doesn’t remember, a whispered echo of his last exchange just at the edges of his conscious, and ones for moments he wasn’t part of.

As empty, as still as the collider chamber is around him, he cannot shake the feeling of movement, of everything being turned on its head, a pressure rushing up around him that he needs to get away from before it consumes him.

His foot drags and he stumbles. This is going to be a long walk home.

_Home,_ he thinks. It’s a simple thought and since it doesn’t require much effort, unlike giving himself increased heart palpitations he can barely handle or fretting over a missing kid, it’s one he zeroes in on.

_Home_. He likes the sound of that.

Spider-Man gets back up.

— — — —

Climbing is easier when web slinging is involved, less so when he only has proper use of one arm and every move is slow going. It’s through electrostatic force and sheer dumb luck, maybe force of will that he doesn’t go slip-sliding his way back down what remains of the wall of the chamber. He doesn’t let himself risk looking down, because even if scaling heights came with the Spider-Man territory, his gut is already churning as it is, and doing so will only remind him of what little headway he’s maybe in the last, what, hour? Day? Time is a construct, though the joke falls flat and it hurts too much to think about. He feels like he's been gone forever, for five seconds, like he never left.

Every stretch, every reach, pulls at something in his chest, and going over scientific names for muscles doesn’t help him any. Peter makes a beeline for the observation deck, those it’s less beeline and more serpentine, and he has to pause for two minutes for every foot he moves. It’s exhausting, and he has to rest his forehead against the cool metal, leaving it slick with sweat.

The windows are blown out when he finally makes it up, and all the mental preparation in the world can’t prepare him for when he heaves himself over the sill, shards of glass digging into his palms through the tears in his gloves. He releases a dull roar at the strain it puts on his dislocated shoulder, and another as he goes careening into a desk, only managing to stay upright when his free hand goes scrambling for purchase.

“Why couldn’t it have been beanbag chairs?” he says to no one in particular (kind of hard to, seeing as there isn’t anyone else there) and slumps against shattered keyboards and broken bits of machinery. As far as resting places go, it isn’t a vast improvement from the concrete way down below.“All the rage now… no one uses actual desks. High time villains get with the program.”

What happened to Norman?

He pauses again, which only serves to remind him that his entire body hasn’t stopped hurting, more so now that he’s exhibited some physical strain, and that hey, Norm is probably still pissed.

But his spider-sense tells him nothing, doesn’t tell him there’s anyone else around him, just that hey, he’s still in pain. Probably will be for a while, or until he does something about it, or until Fisk decides he isn’t done and has something to say about that.

Peter barely rolls his head on his shoulder, the bad one, and squints through the missing lens into the rubble below. He looks for a distended wing, a Peter Parker-shaped spider smear, an employee under Kingpin’s heavy thumb who either missed him, or let him slip by before the inevitable caught up with him. He waits for another blur of color that is there but isn't, distant sounds of battle, of a fight he was part of but also wasn't.

He closes his eyes, lets his head duck into his chest before it screams up at him that that’s a terrible idea and he wants to scream back because he _hurts_ and he’s _tired_ , and he wants to not be here.

Back to wandering home it is.

Going home, like most things, is great in theory. Wonderful, even, a daydream to slip into when things are going awry, a pleasant thought to fall back on when being surrounded by ones that aren’t, but it’s in the execution that he hits a snag.

It’s the blind leading the blind, Spider-Man and Peter Parker trying not to smash his head on, or lose his lunch on, or break the rest of his ribs on all the debris, all the rubble that lies at the base of Fisk Tower. Or what was once Fisk Tower, he supposes, given that the bulk of it has been reduced to little than ash and slabs of concrete, exposed wiring that goes nowhere and jagged rebars that make him wince at the thought of being impaled upon. 

There is likely something to be said about how most of his thoughts, the ones that aren’t relegated to _home_ , to _MJ,_ to _where's the kid,_ or to _ow_ , go circling back to him dying. He thinks he gets a pass on that, though, seeing as he knows he’s supposed to be dead. Peter Parker is dead, dead until he isn’t, clawing his way out of his metaphorical but also actual grave.

As he grabs another handhold, a cracked bit of marble and sends bits and pieces of it careening back behind him, he has to ask who did this, who managed this, _what_ did this. Did he? Did Kingpin, despite Spider-Man’s warning, which he clearly wasn’t going to listen to anyway, and especially not since he killed him? Did the kid? He knew he was going to be the kind of kid who kept his word.

“Not bad, kid,” he says, though it comes out as a wheeze. (He can hear an echo, the traces of a voice that sounds like his but doesn't.) After the next few feet he can see the first few rays of light, actual light, not artificial, not relying on spider-sense to carry him along, poking through what he thinks used to be the floor of the lobby. Or, upon closer inspection, maybe the floor of Fisk’s home office.

The irony of heading toward the light is not lost on him.

The fact it takes him twenty minutes to get there, well, with a rueful smile he tells himself, “Could be worse, could be dead.”

But he isn’t. The city of New York greets him in its post-morning rush hour traffic haze, and he leans heavily on one of the columns formerly adorning the reception’s desk as relief floods him, battling it out with the the angry, white hot pain.

He lets out a groan, low and drawn out, equal parts misery and tension bleeding from him as he stands (mostly) surrounded by crime scene tape and police barriers.

“Well damn, kid, guess you really keep your promises. Like what you’ve done with the place, great feng shui.”

He’s vaguely aware of eyes on him, doesn’t need the spider-sense to tell him that, and the suit feels tighter, more suffocating than it already is, like he didn’t put enough baby powder in the joints, or like he’s too exposed.

Peter barely makes it to the sidewalk, finally out of the rubble, away from the crime scene, away from his deathbed, when he has to stop and catch his breath again.

It’s going to be a long way home, he knows this, but Spider-Man always gets back up.

And, truth be told, Peter Parker just wants to see his wife.

— — — —

It’s slow going, everything is, and he makes it to the street corner, catching himself and propped up by his good arm by the sign, heel of his palm digging into the button for the crosswalk. He should be up in the air, zipping his way through the sky, skimming the edges of buildings as he makes it back to the two-bedroom brownstone, the one three blocks from the university, with the curtains MJ picked out because apparently he has horrible taste, and the French press he’s still learning how to operate. Instead, he’s relegated to the ground, stumbling around the asphalt like he’s punch drunk, doesn’t know which was is up. His head is still swimming, both in pain and with all the knowledge his mind is still trying to sort through.

He’s about to step onto the street when he hears it, when the voice comes up behind him and stops him in his tracks.

“Are you serious? First the new guy and now you? It’s barely been a week; can’t you let people grieve before you start pretending? Can’t you let his wife, dickhead?” 

Peter can barely turn his head to find its owner, but catches a glimpse of a sneer in his peripherals, and can’t dodge the angry shoulder check sent his way that has him on his knees in the middle of the crosswalk. His dislocated shoulder is pulsating in such a way that has him ready to fall face first into the faded white paint, and he grinds his teeth to bite back a scream.

“Shitty costume, anyway,” the guy jeers as he walks past, drawing more attention to the two of them, more than Peter is currently ready to contend with, and, in good ol’ New York fashion, they step around him as he half crawls, half drags his way back to the sidewalk. His breath comes in short pants again, each exhale a wheeze, and has to use one of the green post office bins to hoist himself back to his feet.

It only takes ten minutes. People are staring. He hears his loud gasp echoed, and he can’t make out the dull murmur suddenly cascading around him as the roaring in his ears returns.

He’s only lucky this is a side street, quiet, and he offers a half-hearted wave as he continues on his trek. Please, just let him get home, let him have that one last moment before he dies. Again.

The new guy?

He lets himself bounce between that thought and the one of home, because it distracts him from the pain, like that’s a good coping mechanism, but eventually focusing on the new guy is a thought that tailspins back to being shoved into a particle beam, into a super collider, which is a little too much all at once. A little too soon, too, in all honesty. He died. He died but then he didn't, and MJ, oh God, MJ.

Briefly, he entertains the idea of taking the subway as he approaches one of the entrances, seeing as it's quicker, more painless than his current mode of transportation, but the idea of venturing back down into tunnels is too claustrophobic, brings with it a tingling sensation that has little to do with his spider-sense.

He opts to avoid it entirely, picking up the pace a little more until pain lances up his chest again, bad arm doing little to cushion the blow, and in his haste his footing falters, nearly sending him careening down to the ground, if not the subway tunnel.

People are still staring, still pointing, still looking. At the moment he’s too narrow-minded to care. He probably should, maybe. He has a widowed wife and broken ribs to deal with, first.

He tells himself he ought to move faster, because the sooner he gets home the sooner he sees MJ, the sooner he gets to lie down, gets to rest. The thought of going any faster than he is even makes his teeth ache, though, right down to his toes, and he’s pretty sure one of his molars might be impacted. Hopefully their insurance can cover that, because MJ’s is usually pretty good, but he just went in for a cleaning last month.

What a sight he must be, an undead Spider-Man wheezing out chuckles to himself in broad daylight as he makes mental notes for the dentist.

Focus, Pete.

His head still hurts. His chest hurts. He needs to know the kid made it out okay.

Getting home is an excruciating ordeal. It’s noontime traffic by the time he makes it to his street, can hear the hustle and bustle of people on their lunch break, rushing around like every day it comes as a surprise that they still have only an hour, much like the day before, and he can’t remember what he last meal was.

From his current vantage point he can see their front stoop, the light with the bulb he just replaced, but as he ventures closer, uses the neighbors' own stoops for support, the mass on their step takes shape, and he can discern various pieces of Spider-Man memorabilia, handwritten cards and drawings and letters. Final goodbyes that are meant for him, but also not. Meant for everyone else, meant for no one in particular.

Peter eyes his own front door, obscured by the balloons bobbing around it, and then he’s twenty-one again, on one knee, then both knees, and in the suit save for the mask, fifteen again, and sweaty palms as the neighbor girl tells him he’s won the jackpot and she’s not wrong, boy is she not wrong. His heart pounds in his chest for reasons that have nothing to do with pain, and his laugh is bittersweet as the distance between them takes forever to close.

His heel nearly crushes a stuffed Spider-Man as he stumbles, goes for the loose petals strewn about the step because she must have collected them for vases, they always had vases. He has to choke back another sob as he propels himself toward the door because everything hurts, hasn’t stopped, feels like it never will, and if this is the universe telling him this is his last chance to say goodbye, he’s going to make damn sure he makes it count.

He bodily throws himself against the door, which, in retrospect isn’t one of his smartest moves, but reaching for the doorbell required effort he doesn’t possess. Peter slips down onto the stop, knocking over letters and other gifts as he goes, and he would feel a little guiltier if he wasn’t this close to losing consciousness.

There are footsteps, and he trains his ears on them even as his vision tunnels, hears her soft sigh that is suddenly the most amazing thing he’s ever heard.

Or is this too cruel of him? Too much of a throwback, because did Prowler leave him on the floor of the chamber, or did they leave him on his own front doorstep in a similar state?  


He doesn’t get too much time to think on that.

She’s at the door. He can hear her, feel her, and his head tilts against the railing. She’s so close. He just needs her to open the door. Does he get one last request? Can this be it? Please?

He’s just this side of out of when she does, barely catches the remark about how she appreciates the thoughts and words, but please, right now she—

Peter catches her sharp inhale, somehow manages to open his eyes, half-lidded and vision blurred. Even in her moment of grief, of panic, of the pain and hurt and surprise and fear in her ears, she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Please, this isn’t funny,” he hears her say, and, well, she’s not wrong. MJ’s never wrong. He learned that over ten years of friendship, over four of marriage, and his quip dies on his tongue as he coughs, as she tells him, “This is an awful joke,” through a voice that’s weak and wet, and a sound he never wants to hear from her again.

He swallows around another groan, another muffled cry of his own, and wishes he could get back to his feet one last time. Spider-Man always gets back up. Peter Parker wants to get back up and envelop his wife in a hug, wants to tell Mary Jane everything is going to be okay, for her to do the same.

“I don’t know, I didn’t think my jokes were _that_ bad,” he gets out, the grin he cracks beneath the mask goes unseen and falters.

MJ makes another one of the most pained noises he’s ever heard (and he’s heard a lot, made most of them himself) as she drops to her knees in the threshold, the hand that isn’t using the jamb to support herself reaching into the space between them. It trembles. His own twitches as he goes to reach for her himself.

“Peter?” she says in the softest of whispers, fingertips skimming his bicep like she doesn’t know if he’s real, and maybe he isn’t, and he tilts his head into her palm as it comes to rest against his check. He can still feel its tremors.

He closes his eyes as she goes to remove his mask, hisses at the strain it puts on him as he leans forward, and he wants nothing more than to lie down again. As she pulls the material away he feels like he can breathe again, for the first time in a long time, and when he opens his eyes again he can see the tear tracks etched along her freckles, the way her mouth twists as her shoulders heave, and the way she cries hurts more than Kingpin’s fists ever could.

“Oh my god.” He shifts toward her, intent on closing as much distance between as he can, despite all the pain it puts him through as she sobs and he chokes back tears of his own. “Oh my god.”

In another dimension Peter Parker is dead, in one he is dying, in one he is going to. In this one, in its right here, in its right now, all he needs is this, and maybe, hey, maybe that would be okay.

Because this, this right here, as MJ’s lips skim over his forehead, his cheeks, as his fingers curl over her own as she kisses him, this wouldn’t be the worst send off. He wonders which other Peters and MJs made it, if they know how lucky they have it, in that brief second mourns for those who haven’t.

“Hey MJ,” he says while he rests his forehead against hers, swiping stray tears from her cheek that he know mirrors his own. “Sorry I’m late; traffic was a nightmare.”

The laugh that rips out of her is wet, jostles the both of them, and for a minute he can forget the aches, the pains, the throbs, the everything that is taking its sweet time in healing, because far be it from any universe to cut Peter Parker even a little slack.

This, he decides, as she helps maneuver him in through the doorway, as they sob against one another; as anger and mourning flash through her eyes at the unveiling of each battered and bruised body part as she helps him strip his suit; as he rests his head against her chest, the steady thrum of her heart mimicking his own, this is something the multiverse can never take from him.

He slips back into oblivion.

This time oblivion is warm.


	2. we get back up.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He can hear the hitch in MJ’s breathing, doesn’t have to look to know she’s crying. It’s losing Uncle Ben all over again, a raw, angry pain reaching in and clawing at his insides; it’s forcing Aunt May to endure so much more, even then she’s dealt with enough already._
> 
>  
> 
> _It must be so hypocritical of him—he tells Fisk it won’t work, he doesn’t get his family back, but Peter does._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let me preface this in that i'm so thankful and overwhelmed with the reception to this story! it was started on a whim and because the words were going to bother me until i got them down, but i all hope you know how grateful i am for you.
> 
> i also tried something a little? differently with this? stylistically in the beginning, at least. i'm not sure how i feel about this thing as a whole, but i know the next/last part is going to be the wrap up and Heck Yeah Miles. i'm also excited about this next piece i'm going to start work on, but told myself i had to finish this first, lmao. this whole story was initially going to be wrapped up in this chapter here, but then both mj and may demanded a little more screen time, and i couldn't take that from them. (the one scene with mj was removed twice before it came back to stay.)
> 
> i'm also under the same handle on twitter/tumblr, where on the former you can find me ranting about comics, lmao. i may or may not have dipped into some spider-man ones for real this time.
> 
> and one last point, before we part ways and i come back to find all the typos i left in my wake: for better readability, would you guys before these chapters broken up more? something smaller, chapters that follow more of the line breaks versus being met with a wall of text?

Peter Parker goes bobbing along through the lazy river that is the gray area between time and space and not time and not space, unable to close his eyes at the visual assault that is everything that is and was and will be and isn’t and won’t be. 

Dwelling too long on the senseless images that make the most sense of all is enough to make him feel like his head is splitting at the seams, about to burst much like his chest had. Is. He is drowning, choking, pressure building up in his ears.

There are splashes of color. Bright, neon, angry, and violent, subdued and calming and then splintering into colors he doesn’t even have names for. There are broken images of people he knows but doesn’t, the slope of a shoulder of man painted in shadows, the slip of a girl he almost misses, darting by in white. What makes the most sense, but also the least sense, is the duo always in his peripherals, just out of range, of a figure who looks so much like him that he doesn’t, and the smaller one clinging to his shirtfront, reds and blues bleeding into one another, before releasing him into the abyss.

Peter goes tumbling after him, a swarm of noise and silence.

And tumbles.

And tumbles.

He falls for thirty seconds, he falls for infinity, he doesn’t fall at all.

— — — —

The only thing standing between this city and oblivion is me.

— — — —

He loves being Spider-Man, loves it until he doesn’t. Until it goes and gets him killed, his wife a widow and his aunt to bury someone she made promise would outlive her. And he’d known, known that it was more than plausible his life would end with him decked out in red and blue, that he would not become the silver fox Mary Jane had joked he would be.

He does not live to become the silver fox. He does not get that house in the suburbs they saw on an advert in the window as they walked to get groceries. No little hand reaches for his, but he wants, wants, wants.

He gets a tombstone.

— — — —

Brooklyn martyrs Spider-Man, martyrs Peter Parker. Peter Parker didn’t exist in the eyes of Brooklyn until Spider-Man died.

— — — —

Oblivion says, go to sleep. Oblivion says, why do you matter. Oblivion says, you don’t exist.

— — — —

Brooklyn hates Spider-Man.

Brooklyn doesn’t. Loves the new one. Hates the old one.

Hates the new one. Loves the old one.

The old one had to go and get himself killed. The new one went and left him for dead.

The new one had to watch the old one die because the old one failed, couldn’t keep a promise. It’s going to be okay, he said. He lied.

He lies, has lied, will lie. Dies for it.

It’s going to be okay. It isn’t.

He makes the kid watch.

— — — —

Are you sorry, Peter?

— — — —

Peter Parker hates Spider-Man.

Mary Jane Watson hates Spider-Man. She doesn’t. Spider-Man dominated their relationship for months until she called it off, said all she wanted was a balance, for him to find that divide between where Peter Parker and Spider-Man existed, where she fit, for him to stay safe, and the ring box burned where it sat in his coat pocket for six weeks.

Mary Jane Parker hates Spider-Man because he gets her husband killed. Mary Jane Parker opens the door to the police on a Monday afternoon and they ask, _are you Mrs. Parker,_ say _there’s been an incident_ , and everything after that is white noise. Mary Jane Parker knocks her shin on the coffee table and falls to the floor sobbing, throat too tight and chest aching because Peter is supposed to come home, supposed to kiss her cheek every time he leaves, come home, supposed to say _goodnight, I love you._ He doesn’t.

Peter watches, but he doesn’t.

The notes for his dissertation are still spread all across the kitchen table. He watches the sweep of her arm that sends them flying around the room in a disarray, hears the cry that tears itself from her, and it echoes the one he wants to make, but can’t.

In another timeline, he didn’t die, didn’t hurt his wife like this.

In another timeline, he still screwed things up.

It scares him. He thinks he broke her heart.

— — — —

You’re dead, Peter.

— — — —

Can you get back up?

— — — —

Oblivion says, why would you want to?

Miles says, it’s a leap of faith.

— — — —

Peter jumps.

— — — —

Who the hell is Miles?

— — — —

He’s caught in a state of delirium, barely on the edge of consciousness that it takes a good minute for his surroundings to register. Half-expecting to have floated back into awareness on the remnants of a cold concrete floor, if he woke up at all, the cushions are a nice change of pace. As are the fingers currently running through his damp hair, matted to his head with sweat and dirt.

He shifts and grunts and groans as he works to open his eyes, afraid of what he’ll see, what he won’t. As he tilts his head, against what he now realizes is a leg supporting his neck, Mary Jane tilts hers, and the sight of her alone almost rips another sob from him. Whether he gets to keep this or not, whether it is real or not, it is the only thing he wants.

“Peter,” she says, in the same whisper-soft voice she’d used on the stoop, and this is real, he knows that now. Nothing can take this from him.

“MJ,” he says back, and his voice is cracked and weak and so ill-used. The angle is awkward and it puts too much strain on his neck to try to sit up any further—his chest also reminds him of that—but he’ll be damned if there’s any more space between them.

Her eyes are bright with unshed tears, and his heart skips a beat and an anxious thrum reverberates throughout his body, re-awakening all those aches and pains he forgot about as he reaches up to her with his good arm, even as she tells him: “Easy, Tiger. Not my first time playing nurse.”

Something in her tone tells Peter she wishes it were her last, but at the same time is thankful she had _this_. Aren’t they a pair, because so is he.

“Didn’t even get a sticker,” he gripes, head lolling against her thigh, almost pushing it back into her hand as it continues to card through his hair. His free hand reaches up for her own, fingers winding around hers and their knuckles come to rest at the dip in his collarbone. He presses a kiss to the back of her palm, lets it linger. “Decent service, though, so all can be forgiven. A hundred-outta-ten.”

He curls back into her, as much as he can, nose tucked into the fold her her wrist, at the pulse point thrumming just beneath the skin that that serves as his anchor. He does his best to ignore any of the pains that tell him  _don't_.

“Smell ya later,” he says with a sniff and a chuckle that hedges on a sigh. He can hear her own above him, floating in the space between them as her grip on his hand tightens. Repeating his own last words, how jacked is that, but this time he tacks on an extra “I love you,” for good measure.

“I love you.” She repeats it, murmurs again, and again, and it lulls him back into a state of security. Tears burn against his closed eyelids.

He never left her without a goodbye, never forgot to say _I love you_ as he slipped out a window, even if things were tense between them, even if they were arguing, because he could never live with himself (ha) if they parted on a sour note.

“I love you too much to die on you,” he says, and it’s so uniquely, stupidly, purely him, that the corners of MJ’s lips twitch before she laughs, truly laughs, because leave it to Peter Parker to be an utter cheeseball even after death.

Her wedding band presses into his palm.

Something in oblivion whispers to him, and he falls into a sleep where he dreams of nothing and everything.

— — — —

“How long was — ?”

“It’s been a week, Pete,” she says, and he watches her bangs fall into her face, wants to reach up to tuck them behind her ear, but can’t find it in him to let go of her hand.

“Oh.”

He thinks of one-hundred and sixty-eight things he could say, one for every hour he was gone. One for every hour of misery he put her and May through. For every hour he made her mourn, grieve, choked on the pain he was all too familiar with, for every word he put in her eulogy.

In all her grief, all her anger and pain, she is nothing but steadfast, determined, and he loves her all the more for it.

He thinks, _I’m sorry I didn’t make it back on time;_ thinks _I’m sorry I took so long;_ thinks _I’m sorry for the pain,_ for all the hurt he caused her, for returning only to tear the wound open again. He tries not to say he should be dead, knows he should be, thinks he should be, that Peter Parker is no longer meant to exist in this timeline. He can say sorry all he wants, but it doesn’t undo any of the hurt he caused.

“I can hear you thinking, Tiger.”

He has to tell her in those last few moments, in all those moments leading up to them, he’d been so _afraid_. He’d known was coming, had seen it, and then it all came to a head and he _died_. He’s dead. He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s.

He trembles, something in his chest dislodging and rattling and rolling inside him. He can feel his chest splitting open. He’s supposed to be dead.

_I’m Spider-Man,_ he thinks until he isn’t. He’s just a scared little boy. He's scared and he doesn't want to die, what's wrong with that?

He has to tell himself to knock it off with the mental barrage of _I’m dead, I’m dead._ It does wonders for his mental state, which is to say it does none at all.

He exists in a liminal space until the universe, until oblivion, decides he doesn’t.

— — — —

Temporal wormhole is what they unofficially officially decide to call it, which is basically an inaccurate term but their scientific name for “who knows but maybe we’re better off not questioning it.” 

There are talks on anomalies, which they only briefly touch on, and Peter idles his way through multiverse comments until they make his head spin. _Anomalies_ , they say; well, spider-powers aside, Peter would _like_ to think there’s a better way to describe him.

Peter Parker’s been dead for a week.

Temporal displacement. Sounds a little more fitting.

It does sound kind of cool, though, to say he’s the product of a wormhole ripped open in the time/space continuum. Maybe he should send Fisk a _thank you_ card.

It’s what they decide on while Peter, dead but not dead, supposed to be dead, sits on the living room couch, whole and real and in the back of his mind, right next to that niggling sensation that’s quieted down ever since he got home, expects this all to vanish around him. He’s almost waiting for another wormhole, whatever it’s supposed to look like, if it looks like anything, if there’s going to be any forewarning, to drag him right back on to death and oblivion. Yeah, _yikes_.

Eventually, after a few minutes of closing his eyes with Mary Jane running her hands through his hair and after she’d plied him with a couple more painkillers and some water, his gaze falls on the day’s (yesterday’s?) paper. It settles on the image of a figure on the front paper he doesn’t recognize, but part of him swears he does.

He eyes the red and black, the familiar twist to the figure’s form, the same maneuver he’s used countless times before. From his vantage point he can’t see much of the photo, just the obscured headline above that reads WHO IS THE NEW SPIDERMAN? and he has to sigh a little because everyone always forgets the hyphen. He isn’t above admitting he’s a little jealous of the look, a suit that’s a far cry from the caped design he’d worn for a minute there. He can’t believe Aunt May let him out of the house like that.

Something twinges in his chest, and he tears his gaze away from the newspaper, and instead back to watching MJ from where he lays with his head in her lap.

“I'm sorry,” he chokes out, because he needs to make sure she hears it, that she knows. “I'm so sorry.”

— — — —

He has so many questions as to how he’s here, again, in all his bandaged and worn-out sweats glory while his wife putters around him. Even so, this the last gift horse he wants to look in the mouth, especially considering said horse can change its mind at any second and stomp him back out of existence with its Wilson Fisk’s fist-shaped hooves.

Peter is still half-conscious when Aunt May arrives, doing his damndest to remain awake on the couch, despite Mary Jane’s insistence he try to get some rest, or at least stop squirming so much. Enhanced healing or not it’s going to take longer than five minutes for those ribs to piece themselves back together, and he’d all but clung to her when she moved away from him to grab her phone, to call his aunt.

The three hours he spent dragging himself home hadn’t helped his injuries any, but he can’t say he regrets any of it. He hadn’t exactly had his metro pass on him for the bus, and the idea alone of taking the subway had made his skin crawl.

“Hey, Aunt May,” he says, fingers twitching in the barest semblance of a wave. She stands in the doorway, as strong and stalwart as ever, and he’s ashamed that he can’t get to his feet. Spider-Man always gets up. Peter Parker just wants his aunt.

The lines her face are different, more pronounced. Beneath the look of shock that wars with an expression he can’t name, there are traces of pure pain. They had said their goodbyes, made peace with the knowledge he was gone, and instead he’s come dragging himself back because they can’t get rid of him that easy. His entire life, or maybe the one before this, or maybe this one, or maybe all of him, is a giant cosmic joke.

She looks at him in a way that makes Peter feel she’s surprised to see him (that’s a given, what with the whole ‘dead’ thing) but almost like she… expected it. Call it aunt intuition, the spider-sense that belongs solely and uniquely to Aunt May, or the knowledge of the multiverse prickling at the corners of his mind, he finds he isn’t all that surprised, either.

But then she shifts, and something clicks, and he catches her soft “oh my word,” and tears well up, and. Oh.

He finds it difficult to place the expression in her eyes—she looks sad, so sad, in a way he hasn’t seen since Uncle Ben died. She cries as she wraps her arms around him, pulls him into the kind of hug that always made him feel the safest, whether it was a long night of fighting crime or a long day of putting up with bullies.

May holds his face in her hands when she pulls away, and his free hand comes up to rest against hers. His bad arm sits in a sling he vaguely remembers MJ pulling out of the drawer, letting her guide it through it as all he could do in that moment was stare at her.

He pulls his gaze away from her for a split second to let it dart down to his abdomen, to expanse of bandages wound around him, and a dull ache pulses through his chest each time it expands and contracts, and it tightens at the thought he lost this. The bandages already itch.

“I thought I’d lost you,” is what she says to him, after her soft litany of _Peter_ , and _my boy_ , into his still dirty hair. Even MJ’s fingers hadn’t been able to tame the cowlick, couldn’t erase all the traces of dirt and sweat, and the saline gathered at his temples from where he’d cried when he’d awoken with his head in MJ’s lap and realized this was real. Her hand rests on his back, right between his shoulder blades.

Peter Parker was dead, is. Peter Parker is supposed to be dead. In this universe Peter Parker ceases to exist. He is beaten to a bloody pulp and his wife is a widow at twenty-six. He doesn’t finish graduate school, doesn’t get to stumble his way toward the subject of kids while pushing mashed potatoes around his plate, even though they’re both young, but he _wants_ , he wants a future.

Peter Parker is buried in an oak casket with a picture of his wedding day and one of Uncle Ben and Aunt May. He's buried with reminders of what he isn't supposed to, going to have.

Peter Parker has a tombstone.

Peter Parker isn’t supposed to have a _future_.

“Aunt May … ” His tongue is heavy, and when he goes to blink away tears visions of things he knows but doesn’t, understands but doesn’t, blur across the backs of his eyelids, and his fingers tighten around the hand that has guided him, helped him up so many times as he lets out a sob. “I’m sorry, I am _so, so sorry_.”

He can hear the hitch in MJ’s breathing, doesn’t have to look to know she’s crying, and a spark of anger toward himself makes its presences known. And then May is drawing him in again, and he hiccup-sobs into her collar, irritated at the useless arm at his chest that doesn’t allow him to hug her properly. It’s losing Uncle Ben all over again, a raw, angry pain reaching in and clawing at his insides; it’s forcing Aunt May to endure so much more, even then she’s dealt with enough already.

They’re grieving and here he comes back from the dead but also not dead to dig at wounds that have barely begun to heal over. Peter Parker can’t even die properly.

“I love you, I’m proud of you,” he hears her say over the jagged sound of his own breathing, the roaring in his ears and the pressure building up in his head, his throat, from attempting to stifle anymore sobs. Aunt May deserves better than her undead nephew snotting all over her shoulder.

“I couldn’t—I don’t—I—” he starts and stops so many times the words get caught his throat and he slumps against her. Tension bleeds from his shoulders and he’s six years old again and mom is gone and dad is gone and his aunt holds him and tells him she loves him, so much.

Aunt May is taking things fairly well, considering.

He’d spent most of his reunion with MJ cry-kissing on the front step, and then in the foyer, and then was half-aware while she took stock of his wounds, and then followed her in a daze before passing out in her lap on the couch. So, comparatively speaking.

“I had to make sure it was really you,” she says, but there’s that look in her eye that says it was more to herself than anything. May sits back. He leans a little more into MJ, and her palm smooths from his back to run down his good arm until her fingers encircle his wrist.

“In the battered and bruised flesh,” Peter says, though the bandages and injured ribs don’t allow for more than a half-hearted chuckle. The grin is lopsided, though. “What’s blue and red and hurts all over?”

Spider-Man always gets up.

Peter Parker has been dead for a week.

Morbid curiosity dictates he wants to see what his own tombstone looks like.

(Stop thinking about that, Peter.)

Aunt May pats his cheek, and he rests against MJ, back into the circle of her arms, because he’s exhausted in every way that matters. She kisses his temple and he tilts his head toward her, even if that simple motion hurts. He’ll endure every ache and pain, let the universe tear him apart on a molecular level if it means he gets to stay here, even for just a little while longer.

“How do you… ?” he starts again, but May shakes her head and softly tells him to rest up with that knowing gleam in her eye she’s always had, and welcomes herself to their kitchen.

Oblivion curls at the edges of his being, and Peter trembles against his wife.

She must know, because her grip on his tightens, mindful of his chest, but enough to ground him.

Mary Jane is a tether, holding a Spidey-shaped balloon in place least he go on and vanish again, caught in a tailwind.

He has no plans on going elsewhere for a long while.

He can only hope the universe feels the same way.

— — — —

He’s never been so hungry in his life, ravenous in such a way that his fifteen year-old self has nothing on, enhanced metabolism post-spider bite or not. He could join a pie-eating contest, make it halfway through and start sobbing because he’s had enough pie, is sick of pie, but then wipe his snotty nose and dig into the next round.

He could very well eat them out of house and home, and probably would had it not been the universal neighborly thing to do to bring a casserole over whenever someone dies. He doesn’t even _like_ most casseroles. 

Peter’s on his third sugar cookie, a Spider-Man mask masterfully etched in frosting that’s just this side of too sweet, and he’s going to make himself sick. MJ, when she isn’t touching him, be it with her hands, or her knee, or her shoulder, busies herself with picking her cookie apart into crumbs while May’s goes untouched.

“Do you think this counts as cannibalism?” He can practically hear MJ’s eye roll, and sinks his teeth into the one of his cookie. May sighs, and there is such an ease, a relief to it, that he feels as if he never left. Maybe he didn’t.

Peter swallows, brushing stray crumbs away from his mouth with the pad of his thumb, and then off his knee and onto the floor. Two sets of eyes scowl at him with no heat behind them, and his throat tightens for reasons that have nothing to do with the dull throb slowly increasing its tempo. His body has already burned its way through the pain killers he'd taken prior to zonking out on the couch.

It must be so hypocritical of him—he tells Fisk it won’t work, he doesn’t get his family back, but Peter does.

He loses his appetite after that.

— — — —

Watching the news is an utterly surreal thing and kind of makes him sick, but he’s too uncomfortable to admit it, so he doesn’t ask them to switch it off. It’s better to ease himself back into the swing of things (ha ha) than to go scrolling through and play catch up on MJ’s tablet, he supposes. Better to start with checking out the weather for the upcoming week and the stock exchange he has little interest in, and oh, there they go again with the Spider-Man tributes.

Brooklyn seems like it’s torn between intent on making a martyr of the original Spider-Man, and vilifying the new one. Decisions, decisions. And what is he supposed to say or do with that?

He keeps staring at Aunt May from his vantage point that is him propped up against MJ, and a few minutes ago she’d reached over to squeeze his knee when she’d caught him looking. There is a spark in her eye, a delicate murmur passed between she and MJ as he dozes and they think he isn’t paying attention. His chest hurts less now, but he doesn’t think it has anything to do with slabs of concrete pining him to the floor, nor the memory of Wilson Fisk going spider squashing.

It almost feels like an average night: Peter’s gone and gotten his ass handed to him, and he goes crawling home to lick his wounds. More at eleven. Maybe, if he’s lucky (Parker Luck says no, and also, he’d died, so how lucky is that) they’ll even let him stay up past his bedtime. The thought makes him wheeze, which earns a concerned look as the mid-afternoon sun slants through the blinds.

A rational part of him says a hospital would have been a good idea, but the other more rational part says no, because he’s also kind of dead. Supposed to be. They’d have to iron out the logistics. 

Venturing out in public is out of the question, because what is he supposed to tell people? Oh yeah, Peter Parker died, but also not really, because see, folks, turns out instead of a billiards room, Wilson Fisk kept a super collider in his basement in an attempt to seek out his dead wife and son in an alternate dimension, and that earthquake everyone felt last week? Yeah, no, that was said collider having a few technical difficulties because Norman Osborn shoved Spider-Man into a particle beam, and then he died. But then also he didn’t, because a week later a wormhole spat him back out five minutes before he was supposed to have died. Or something like that.

He also hasn’t ironed out the finer details.

New Yorkers will buy into many things, but maybe not that.

MJ excuses herself, and something in his throat constricts as she goes to move away, biting down at his tongue when it jostles every ache, and tucks the throw blanket from the back of the couch at his side instead. He uses it and the arm rest to prop himself back into an upright sitting position, and he sees Aunt May jerk when he winces, body screaming at him to stop, dammit, please just stop.

“You never could sit still.” He hears her say, and he opens his eyes to find her adjusting the strap of the sling where it’s gotten twisted, digging into the bruise on his shoulder blade. “If you stop moving so much, you might heal a bit faster, you know.”

She pulls back, hand at his cheek just like it was when he was six, just like the day she discovered he was Spider-Man, just like it was on his wedding day. Peter tilts his head. Whatever quip he has dies on his tongue, because it was his inability to keep his mouth shut, Fisk’s to handle the truth, that got him killed in the first place.

He looks back up at her, at the hint of tension at the lines of her shoulders, and pretends the noise he makes is certainly not a whine. His whole body hurts. He has half a mind to mutter something about how he should be healing faster in general, or how he shouldn’t be healing at all given that he’s dead, or _was_ dead, legally, officially, physically, and every other -lly (-ly?) there is.

Aunt May still looks… sad. Tired.

It hits him, then, that it isn’t seeing Peter that startles her, it’s seeing _her_ Peter that does. Little starbursts of color and pain flash along the edges of his vision, harmonize with the buzzing in the back of his mind. Maybe he isn’t supposed to know that.

“You’re taking this a lot better than I did,” he finally says, sagging into the cushions, into Aunt May’s presence. “But you’re also the strongest person I’ve ever met in my life, so I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised. I just—I’m sorry, Aunt May.”

She’s the strongest person he knows, always has been, always had that resilience to her, the one he drew from every night he donned the costume, two-fold ever since MJ developed a stronger presence in his life. They’re both stronger than him, even the kid—oh God, the _kid_. His heart pounds in his chest after skipping a beat, and May must know, must pick up on it.

“You came back to me,” she says, as if that simple statement, with all its weight, is enough of an answer. And maybe it is, somehow. But then it settles, and he can hear MJ approaching them again with new bandages, and he has to say:

“You make it sound like this isn’t the first time.” And it isn’t, because there has been more than one occasion where Peter’s only barely made it home, but there is something in her tone, in the way she holds herself. There’s a buzzing in the back of his mind.

(His head is going to split open and there are colors, colors, and more colors, and Norman is crushing him, and the kid’s still there, and)

She’s quiet for a moment, the corner of her mouth twitching into the grin he inherited from her as MJ sets her supplies on the coffee table. She, too, is quiet, though he watches her gaze pass between them.

“It isn’t,” she starts, like that’s explanation enough, and then she drops her hand as she moves to sit on the table, even though that would never fly at her house, but he doesn’t say anything. Her brow furrows minutely, and she takes a breath. “I… had some guests over last week. Interesting characters, to say the least—I really do think you’d like them, Peter. They really do remind me of you.”

MJ breathes out a soft chuckle, curls swaying as she shakes her head, says: “That’s one way to put it.”

He doesn’t really know what to make of that. Had he been able to, because old habits die hard, he’d be running his hands through his hair. Since he can’t, he settles for staring at the woodgrain of the table and definitely, certainly not pouting, because, _what_.

(You know exactly what, Peter.)

Norman shoves him headlong into a particle beam and he’s about to start screaming in pain and—

“I think someone else can explain it better than I can,” May says as she goes to stand, and he palms two more painkillers from MJ while he watches her. He frowns, about to ask her what that’s supposed to mean, and instead is met with a disjointed knocking on the front door, the pauses echoing with hesitation. The buzzing increases, and he jerks, free hand clenching into a fist as he starts strategizing.

Mary Jane’s hand curls over his shoulder. May gives him a look, an eyebrow raised like he’d better behave himself, and and he grits his teeth as his body tenses because wow, yeah, that still hurts. He watches Aunt May sidestep a basket of cards in the foyer, and the too many flowers because they didn’t have enough vases. He lets out a loud exhale through his nose, because Aunt May please don’t touch that door—

“It’s about time,” she says, and because of the wall he can’t see who she’s talking to, only the back of her head, and now the tingling sensation carries a little more familiarity with it, and he tries to shift. The remnants of his suit are in a pile on the floor by the armchair. His web shooters are on the runner.

He goes to move when Aunt May does, and then freezes because, oh, well.

Peter stares. The kid he traumatized, the kid he made promise to save the world and then went and died on, stares back.

The kid—Miles, he hears Aunt May call him—is utterly petrified. Peter can tell by the way he holds himself, at the dip in the hardwood floor where the foyer meets the living room, poised like fight or flight has kicked in, like he’s about to bolt if Peter so much as breathes. He can’t blame him; he forced the kid to endure enough, _had to watch him die,_ for crying out loud, and here he is, back to haunt him. (Is this why he’s back? What a cruel joke.)

“Hey, kid,” he offers, and there’s that dissonance again, a voice that sounds like his but doesn’t, and Miles flinches.

Peter shuffles, licks his lip and tries again, letting his body sag in an attempt to appear more non-threatening than his bruised self already is. He must be a sorry sight of a hero come back from the dead.

But then the kid is careening toward him, and spider-sense or not, he barely has any time to register and react before there are arms wound around his waist. He fails to hold back a hiss, sense screaming that he’s in pain, there’s someone like him, but he’s in pain, but this kid is like him, and Miles lets out a choked sound.

“Sh—crap, man, I’m so sorry,” he says, and, pain or no pain, Peter halts him by pulling him in again, and grits his teeth and bears it as he holds him, sniffling against the recently changed bandages. There’s been enough crying in this house for the past three hours, let alone week, maybe, that they’ve filled their quota for the year.

“You saved my life,” he says, nose buried in the kid’s hair and face screwed up because it hurts, fuck, but he doesn’t want to let him go. “You did it, kid."

Miles lets a _shit_ slip out as he clings to him, and he hopes Aunt May doesn’t reprimand them for it, given the context. Besides, he’s said so much worse during patrol or fights with the big bads that not even washing his mouth out with soap could help.

“You know your shoes are still untied?” he gets out amidst a wheeze, b ut Peter is laughing, laughing like he hasn’t in a while, and then Miles almost trips over himself in his haste to let go. He wipes his nose on his sleeve, and Peter notes hints of black and red in the overhead light MJ’s switched on as the sun starts to set outside the window. There's black and red and blue and snippets of sounds gathering at the edges of his consciousness, but he pushes them away in favor of releasing Miles so that the kid can make himself comfortable.

It’s then that Peter gets a good look at him, really looks this time, no Goblin or Fisk or potential world destruction waiting in the wings. Has the kid—Miles, he has to remember to keep calling him that—always been this tiny? He looks maybe an hour over thirteen, if that, and Peter shoved a goober in his hand and told him _hey, go do this totally terrifying thing without any guidance whatsoever, excuse me while I take a dirt nap._

Miles draws in a breath, wiping his face again, and Peter’s chest aches in a way that has nothing to do with any bruises. His eyes are wide and glassy, and Peter’s hand come up to the back of his neck to give it a squeeze. He catches a glimpse of the suit and he’s pretty sure he’s never felt pride like this before.

Miles didn’t just do it, didn’t just keep his word, he did it better than Peter could have hoped to ever dream of. The world doesn’t deserve this kid, and Peter is going to do everything in his power to remind people of that.

Spider-Man gets back up.

“Tell me everything.”


	3. we try again.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Miles has so much potential. Here, now, they get a do-over. Peter gets to keep the formerly ill-fated promise he made right before the universe told him to go take a dirt nap, gets to say I can show you the ropes, if you want and mean it. Miles doesn’t have to go it alone, learn by exhausting trial and too much error. It makes his chest constrict in a way that has nothing to do with guilt or pain._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well heLLO. it's only been seven months, which is seven months longer than i planned on this taking. this thing was a labor of love and turned out to be much, much longer than i ever thought it would be, but i had a bunch of fun with it, and hope you all know how much i appreciate all the support along the way! major kudos to everyone who's stopped by to read, and thank you for sticking me!
> 
> miles needed his moment in the sun, though in advance i do apologize for the general lack of dialogue, despite this being a rather thought/exposition-driven story. i'm... almost disappointed because this isn't originally what i had envisioned, but overall i'm happy with the end result. hope the same can be said for you guys, lol.
> 
> and with that, we are DONE here! see you around for the next story.
> 
> anyway,

Turns out there’s… a lot.

Peter doesn’t know necessarily where to start—how does he?

It’s only after the kid detaches himself, settles in the armchair and makes himself comfortable that Peter comes to his realization. Parker Luck dictates he not go twenty-four hours (and since dying, he has a lot of catching up to do) without feeling like an idiot in some way, shape, or form, and that he realizes he isn’t the Peter Miles is looking for. He is but isn’t the Peter he knows, the one he respects, looks up to. He’s just the rendition that went and lied and got himself killed. The more he learns the more his train of thought goes from _hey, neat_ to _hey, so, what the fuck._

Miles… has no idea who he is. He just looks like a guy who Miles knows, met once in passing.

He continues to stare at Miles, watches him settle against the arm of the cushion in a way that’s too stiff, too haggard for all his thirteen years. And he’s _young_ , younger than Peter was when he first started, and his stomach lurches, threatening all the reheated grief casseroles he’s plied himself with.

This isn’t about him, now. It never really has been.

But he couldn’t be there for the kid, couldn’t help him along that journey of self-discovery and spider powers, couldn’t be there beside him, telling him to square his hips, hold his fist like this to throw a punch. This isn’t _Galaxy Force_ where his ghost comes back to aid his young pupil, and then the universe said _no_ and then reneged on its deal only after the fact. (But then how sick would that have been? Spidey-ghost here to serve as a guide, showing up at the Big Battle to impart some words of wisdom in the form of a one-liner.)

He only put too much pressure on an in-experienced, young kid, one who’d just met the city’s masked webslinger, watched him get his ass handed to him and then had to watch him die. It has to be too much for the kid, so much trauma and pain thrust upon him all at once, and Peter had made him promise to do the unimaginable. He could have gotten him killed. 

His sins are piling up, and he has so much to atone for. He’s drowning in them.

So he smiles. He sits against the arm of the couch and smiles.

“I’m—” he starts, goes to introduce himself. The corners of Miles’ mouth twitch like he wants to grin, but his eyes look more like he’s seen a ghost. Peter doesn’t quite know how to contend with that, not just yet.

“I know who you are.”

Oh, right. He supposes that would make sense. The media had a field day when it had not only learned that Spider-Man had died, but the identity of the man behind the mask. For all its facade of mourning, it pulled no punches. He’d left MJ and Aunt May to weather the storm for him, and Miles, too. How fair is he.

People grieve when it’s convenient.

“Okay, well,” he starts again, reaching up with his good arm to scratch the back of his neck. He eyes the mismatched socks from where Miles alternates between crossing and uncrossing his legs. He’d kicked off his untied shoes after a quick glance to Aunt May and a reassuring _don’t worry about it_ from MJ. “How about we try again? My name’s Peter Parker, and you saved my life. Nice to meet you, officially.”

The only way he can think to describe Miles’ smile is sheepish, a hint of teeth as he ducks his head, chuckles a little, but whether it’s at the comment or this scenario he isn’t sure. Frankly, he still can’t believe it himself, despite how very, _very_ realistic all the bandaging MJ had done was. He should probably change them soon.

But first, a lot happens in a week, and Peter went and Rip Van Wrinkled his way through it.

“You know this is the part where you tell me your name, right? To be all proper and formal-like.”

The kid nods and raises his head again, and MJ sits at the other end of the couch, chin propped up on her fist with a bemused gleam in her eye. Her free hand reaches into the space between them, resting against his knee and giving it a squeeze.

Any time she moves by him she’s sure to establish some physical contact: her fingers tracing along his shoulder, the back of his neck, down his arm, and the side of his face. Peter relishes it, all of it, and wouldn’t be able to find it in him to pull away even if he had to. She’s too good for him.

He’d reach for her, too, if it weren’t for the sling.

“Miles Morales, and you’re… welcome, I guess? Even though it almost blew up Brooklyn?”

Peter laughs louder than he means to, a sound that reverberates throughout his ribcage in a manner that’s more painful than it usually is. It’s abrupt, the sound tearing out of him much like the way his last breath had been. (Stop thinking about that, Pete.) “Glad it wasn’t Brooklyn. Staten Island, on the other hand, well.”

Miles chuckles a little, fidgeting, and May works her way back to the kitchen after collecting their glasses from earlier. He has half a mind to go trailing after her when she disappears from view, because part of him needs to ensure she’s still here, that he is, that she won’t go vanishing on him, that the universe won’t renege on this deal he didn’t know they made.

He can still feel something there, almost like a gentle coaxing he has to work to avoid. MJ’s hand is on his knee, and Miles’ own bounces. He focuses on that.

“Hey, a couple of explosions, and most of them were geared toward Fisk. I can live with that. Want a cookie?” And he winces only a little at the word choice before gesturing to the array on the coffee table, the ones he hasn’t nibbled on yet, and the tray of crumbs and leftover bits from the last casserole he stuffed himself with. It has yet to settle in his stomach still.

Peter can’t tell where, but Miles glances somewhere over his shoulder, and he gets the impression Aunt May’s giving him the kind of _look_ that either tells him go for it, or he’s gotta.

“Uh, thanks,” he murmurs, fingers hovering over the plate, and Peter’s brow furrows at the soft whispering he can’t quite distinguish, something creeping in alongside the edges of his consciousness. It’s spotting shadows out of his peripherals, even though there’s nothing there when he turns and all the lights are on. Miles holds up a cookie with frosting that’s going to dye his tongue red and takes a bite.

Idly, he wonders if all his notes from his unfinished dissertation are still scattered across the table, or if they’re maybe just shoved to the side. What did MJ do with them, with the rest of his things? Has she been staying here the entire time, accepting condolences from random strangers and not given time to grieve for herself? The city lost Spider-Man. Mary Jane Watson lost her husband. It’s only been a week.

He grits his teeth, forces his attention back on track. Those talks are for later, after, when he redresses his wounds and clings to his wife as they settle in for bed and he’s too terrified to sleep enough though he should, because he's too afraid when, if, he opens his eyes none of this will exist anymore.

“I, uh, thought you were dead,” he says around a mouthful of sugar cookie, and Peter pulls a face, hesitant as to how to broach the subject. Which, he supposes they kind of already had. Almost. Miles’ face is as red as the frosting staining his fingertips. “Sorry.”

“S’okay,” he says without really thinking much on it. Peter waves a hand, not quite sure how to segue into the events that led up to his un-death (which isn’t a word, but since he’s technically no longer supposed to exist, he figures he has every right to make up his own words) because not even he knows how to explain that. “So did I. And so did the rest of New York, I guess. Hence the whole thanks for saving my life—more like my existence, really, seeing how this dimension seemed pretty done with me sticking around. Or at least Fisk did, and I don’t remember giving him a vote.”

Great, he’s making this weird.

Miles gives him a look he can’t decipher, a slow nod and a small line appearing between his brows, the hints of a frown at the corners of his mouth. He fidgets and starts playing with his hands, avoiding his gaze. He stares, goes to say something when May calls him into the kitchen, asks if he wouldn’t mind helping her out for a moment. She must know; she always had her own sense like that.

Peter continues to stare, stares at the vacant spot Miles leaves when he shoots up, just about vaults over the armrest. He can’t imagine how awkward this most be for the kid, a formerly dead man, who he watched die, twice his age and sitting across from him, bandaged and bruised and cracking bad jokes. He stares and his chest hurts, and when he closes his eyes for too long there are still flashes of color he doesn’t recognize.

Miles is thirteen. He’s thirteen and the realization hits his chest with the same force Fisk had, concaving in on itself under the pressure, because he should be out there experiencing life in the nebulous stage between middle and high school. He should be out there darting around vendors on street corners at dusk, moaning and groaning over homework he doesn’t want to do and playing video games he isn’t supposed to. Miles should be out there being a teenager, not playing superhero, not carrying the weight of the world on shoulders that are still too bony, with a stance he hasn’t quite grown into.

“Peter?”

But then… Miles has so much potential. Here, now, they get a do-over. Peter gets to keep the formerly ill-fated promise he made right before the universe told him to go take a dirt nap, gets to say _I can show you the ropes, if you want_ and mean it. Miles doesn’t have to go it alone, learn by exhausting trial and too much error. It makes his chest constrict in a way that has nothing to do with guilt or pain.

“Pete, hey, look at me.” And, soft as it is, her voice is jarring, suddenly, and Peter jolts, hissing through his teeth at the pain searing up along his side. He usually heals faster, faster than most, but most of the time his body is contending with a few bruises or a dislocated shoulder, not... all of this. Miles and May putter around the kitchen, and MJ shifts along the couch to where he’s still propped against the arm like a sack of potatoes, and he turns his face into her palm on instinct. “Where are you right now?”

“Here, mostly,” he says and has to tear his gaze away from the crumbs dotting the coffee table. “I hope.”

“With me, right?”

“Yes.” It comes out faster than he means to, a rush of air against the heel of her palm, because truthfully there’s no where else he’d rather be. Home isn’t simply this place, it’s her, it’s the life they’ve built together, it’s Aunt May coming over on Sundays for dinner, promises to come back safe, and then them laying in bed at night trying to figure out what the future holds. The universe can’t take this from him, not again. Miles already said it couldn’t.

Mary Jane’s eyes are bright and glossy, and he has to close his, take a breath, and knows he has maybe two minutes before May and Miles return and he has to refrain from making ill-timed jokes about his formerly ill-timed demise. It’s a coping mechanism, he can’t help it. He still can’t understand it.

“I don’t know what to do,” Peter murmurs, clearing his throat before opening his eyes again. His good arm reaches up to curl his fingers around her wrist, pulse point a steady thrum against his fingertips. “I’m not who this kid wants me to be, MJ.”

She smiles in that way she always has, one of those demure ones that could have meant everything and anything, depending on who it was for. Her thumb strokes his cheekbone, the one that isn’t as mottled, and notices that something about this one seems almost sad. “You don’t have to be.”

He stares, and he stares, and he thinks, how could he have ever left her the way he did?

“Peter, he just needs you to be you—you need to be you. You’ve been through so much, this past week and since … always.” He tilts his head into her palm, gaze flicking from meeting hers to the two dishes still left on the coffee table, the collection of cookies and the casserole he’d been half-heartedly picking at before May had gone to answer the door. He's never been good with these kinds of talks, or even talks about having these kinds of talks. The breath he lets out feels heavier than it should, something dislodging from his ribs and rattling around before making its way out. There’s a tension creeping into his shoulders, one that has nothing to do with the bruising along his sides, one that’s too reminiscent of the night they lost Uncle Ben.

Beneath the bandages, there are bruises turning from purple to yellow and still slowly healing. There’s that call again, that inkling feeling that is oblivion telling him no, that he isn’t supposed to be sitting on the couch with his wife while Miles gives his aunt a hand in the kitchen. He doesn’t get to train Miles, to spend time with him, to mentor him, he’s only supposed to let him down.

“Peter, come back to me.”

He would give anything for this, just this, to curl up beside MJ and block out the rest of the world, eternity, oblivion, the universe. It’s the least he deserves, isn’t it, after everything? He should wake up in the morning and go meet up with and train Miles. He should. Miles deserves that, too, to not have this trauma, to not have to navigate uncharted waters and have to guess at everything like the rest of them had.

“I’m here,” he whispers, drawing his gaze back to hers. This is where he wants to be, needs to be, has to be. “I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s said with such conviction that for a moment, he believes it, and it’s a moment he latches onto. Nothing can take this from him.

Her eyes look at one of his, and then the other and back again. “Good.”

_ I can do _ _this_ , he thinks, just as May comes back into the living room with Miles in tow, glass of water in hand and a smile on his face. They exchange a look, a silent conversation Peter isn't privy to, and he squints a little, because he's never much cared for not being in on a conversation happening right in front of him. He's nosy like that, especially when he feels like people have been talking about him. His fingers twitch, nails idly scraping against a bruise on his side. MJ's hand closes over his other one.

He breathes, for what feels like for the first time in a long time, and clears his throat while he waves away May's offer of tea and the kid makes himself comfortable again.

“Y’know, you still gotta tell me what happened, after.”

The smile on Mile’s face feels like the first real, genuine one he’s had since he gave Peter a bear hug.

— — —

Turns out, when Miles talks, he _talks_. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen someone so animated before, launching into a story with such zeal that it throws him for a loop for a second, brings out a small smile while he diverts to various tangents and back. It’s as much a relief as it is entertaining. Endearing, maybe, and now he sounds like Uncle Ben.

Peter learns that, apparently, there was another Peter, a Peter B. Parker, older and more experienced, and from another dimension, who aided Miles in his training, and yeah, okay, maybe he’s only just a _little_ bit bitter about that.

This… Peter B. probably had his life together, knew what he was doing with it. Miles says he’s been doing this Spider-Man gig for two decades, and, not for nothing, but he managed to not go and get himself killed doing it.

But, if he’s honest, he’s mostly embittered toward this Peter B. Parker because he got to fill a role Peter didn’t, couldn’t. He was the one to show him the ropes when Peter said he would, got the kid’s hopes up just to go and get his ribs shattered. Someone else was there for Miles when he couldn’t be, was there to train and support where no one could for them, in the beginning.

He breathes, Miles launching into the story of Alchemex Labs, of first learning how to swing (double tap to release and thwip it out again) and, jealousy aside, he does harbor a sense of respect for Peter B. Even if he’s jealous of him. Guy’s probably like… dunno, hit the jackpot with MJ and has life made.

He has a degree in chemical engineering and did a Christmas album. So, y’know, at least he has _that_ over this Peter B. Unless he has a degree in chemical engineering, too. Which he probably does. But then, judging by the way Miles once referred to him as janky and broke (initially, because apparently he got better), maybe this Peter B. doesn’t have all his crap together.

"Uh-huh" is all he says at first, nodding along and making thoughtful noises when appropriate. His brain is practically buzzing with questions he's bitten back rather than bombard Miles with: does he know exactly what the supercollider did? How many renditions of Spider-Man (Spider-People?) are there, exactly? Is there a limit to the number of dimensions out there, and what impact does their existence in this one and his own renewed one have the rest? Does Peter B. do peanut butter first when making a sandwich, or jelly?

Miles is mid-sentence when he cuts him off, because, "Did you say Gwen? Gwen Stacy?" to which Miles raises an eyebrow, and Peter's hand slides to take MJ's at the soft sound she makes. She leans into him, just a little, hair brushing along his shoulder, and for a moment, just a moment, he thinks of a bedroom in a small home in Queens and her hushed _I need to talk to you_ _about something_ in the near-dark.

"Yeah, and she's like,  _really_ cool, just don't tell her I said that," Miles says, and he can tell he's made a mental note to address that later, but then he's already veering off to talk about  _another_ Peter who was followed around by wind, and a Peni, and Spider-Pig—Spider- _Ham_ , he means. If his brain didn't hurt before, it's just about begging for mercy now. Should have known he was going to miss out on a lot when he died. Figures. It's only been a week; couldn't he have died and for once, just once, the news in New York was all  _wow, what a week! Nothing happened so now here's the weather_. 

And yeah, okay, maybe he is just a _little_ bit jealous, and after a minute of rebooting his mind is going to be reeling because this is  _incredible_. Not only does this mean Fisk's collider worked, but there's so much untapped potential. That train of thought gets diverted and saved for later, much like everything else, because then Miles pauses to breathe and then Peter has to sit back and listen again.

Miles tells them how Ock and her merry band of misfits converged on the house, and how May knocked Tombstone out with a bat, and how cool she was, and well, yeah, it was Aunt May. Aunt May's _always_ cool. Don't think Peter missed that smug look she has as she sips her coffee. MJ even chuckles a little, and his heart rate stutters at the thought of yet  _another_ press conference or dinner where she sits, surrounded by the shadow of a dead man while her husband's killer tries to play nice. (Maybe he ought to go back him a visit in jail, after. Could you imagine?)

As they touch upon the touch of his Uncle Aaron, who Peter learns is, _was_ , also Prowler, the same Prowler he’s gone toe-to-toe with more times than he cares for, Miles gets quiet for a moment, voice trailing off, as does his gaze. (And for a moment, maybe just a moment, and in that sick kind of way, Peter’s relieved it wasn’t Prowler who killed him, did so right in front of Miles. It’s one less burden for the kid to bear. Being hunted down by his uncle, however, is no better. He can't tell if he's angry or empathetic.)

He knows, from experience, how life-defining tragedy can be, what that sort of trauma does for growth, for strength; it is one he would never wish upon anyone, though.

"Wow," is what he says after a minute, and Miles huffs a little bit of a laugh. "Well that's... a lot."

"You think?" MJ says, and Peter's hand slips to intertwine their fingers

"I dunno, I kinda like the part about your speech. The part about my tombstone getting destroyed, though? Not so much."

May mutters an _oh my word_ from where she sits, and her (fond, hopefully) exasperation with him is one of the best sounds he's ever heard. After a moment of hesitation, Miles reaches for another one of the cookies still left out on the coffee table and probably dried out for now. Peter runs his tongue over his teeth and tries to think about how they're probably bright red from the frosting, and _of course_ no one thought to say anything to him about it. He's been sitting here like a goober the entire time, and they just let it happen.

"Yeah, that uh... that wasn't intentional," Miles says as he takes a bite and glancing down at a lapful of crumbs. "Technically it was the other Peter who destroyed it though, so. Not totally my fault?"

Peter nods, but also, yikes. Guess he and this Peter B. have some common ground though: nothing like knowing there's a tombstone out there with your name on it. "That was after you tased him, right?"

An indignant squawk is what he gets at first, the kid dumping cookie all over the floor, and he has to laugh even if it makes his ribs hurt and May is shaking her head. "I didn't _tase_ him, I—zapped him, I guess?"

"Isn't that still tasing?"

"Peter."

MJ bumps his shoulder, and Miles grumbles something unintelligible, something about how it's not really tasing, he doesn't know, shut up, and an apology to Mrs. Parker for making a mess. The grumbling stops when he shoves the rest of his cookie into his mouth, though. He's alright, Peter decides.

Later, tonight, MJ will help him into the tub and redress bandages after, tell him she had to make sure he washed behind his ears, tell him about the audition she's supposed to have on Thursday, and as he leans on her to help him into bed she'll curl up beside him on her side, still holding his hand, and he'll kiss every inch of her face he can reach because he loves her, he's loves her, he's so sorry, and think about how something tried to take this from him, from them. Later, he'll think about the impact of what his death had not only on him, on his family, but the way it trickled down into the crevices of the entire borough, all the ripples left in its wake. Later, he'll think about where Peter Parker stands in this world, since he's not supposed to, the media circus that will ensure, the explanations that will be demanded that he can't give. 

For now, though, the kid who saved his life munches on cookies and has to be reminded to keep his feet off the furniture.

Peter opens his mouth the same time Miles does, only the kid beats him to it.

“Guess you’ll be wanting the name back 'n all.”

“I—what?” And he stares again, because that’s really all he can do, synapses firing in the brain working a mile a minute not quite connecting to the mouth he can never keep shut. The frown takes hold a little more, now, and he casts MJ a glance before it all finally clicks through the mental haze of coming down from combating stress, anxiety, trying to comprehend way too much in way too short a time, and the general knowledge that he actually, y'know, died. The latter is going to stick with him for a while. He can still feel a phantom sensation on the back of his neck, like something's waiting for him. He, like most issues he's had to deal with, elects to ignore it until he can't any longer.

Miles' shrug is more a loosening of his shoulders, and he looks... disappointed, almost.

“I’m not Spider-Man,” Peter blurts. “Well, I mean, I _am_ , I guess. Or was, but that’s all technicalities.” 

May smirks into her tea with that all-knowing smirk she's had for as long as Peter's known her, which is forever, really. There aren't quite words for the look Miles gives him, likes he's trying to solve a particularly difficult math equation but doesn't know where to begin, how to even consider beginning.

"Brooklyn has a newer, better, more improved Spider-Man. I can say so just from reading the morning paper. I like to go with my gut, call it intuition... and sometimes hunger, when it growls, but mostly intuition." He shakes his head, and, because he can  _feel_ MJ's eye roll without even having to turn to her, switches gears. "My point being that... Miles, this is all you, bud.  _You're_ Spider-Man. It's not something anyone can force on you, and if you don't want it, you're free to say no at any time. This job, this  _life_ , it isn't easy, it's more than dangerous, but I'm sure you already know that. I'm proud of you, kid; you can do this, I _know_ you can, but the important thing is that _you_ do, too."

The nod he gets is slow, thoughtful, and he can see the gears turns, even as his stomach churns from the thought of this kid putting his life on the line and reheated casserole. Maybe, later, when his body feels less like it got every molecule pulled apart through an inter-dimensional wormhole, like it exists in that liminal space still, or once it finally feels real and like its his again, they'll revisit the Spider-Man thing.

"So... what do you say?"

Maybe, later, he can take the kid under his wing like he said he would, promised he would, right before oblivion took that chance away.

But then the universe said no, time for a doing over, and honestly? Peter's learned the hard way not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Peter reaches out his hand just as Miles goes to shake it, beaming, looking a little like a weight's been lifted off his shoulders. That's okay, they can share it.

Spider-Man always gets back up.

— — —

\- end.


End file.
